feat(auth): give the secrets file a real cross-process lock (#2082)

#1950 shipped FileSecretStore without cross-process mutual exclusion, by
decision: an earlier revision hand-rolled a `mkdir` election with an owner
stamp, a heartbeat and a stale-takeover, and three consecutive review rounds
found a real race in it. The last one is not closable with what Node exposes
— claiming a stale lock atomically needs compare-and-swap on a directory
entry (`renameat2(RENAME_EXCHANGE)`) — so it was replaced with optimistic
verify-and-retry and the residual documented.

#2082 settles that as "borrow, don't hand-roll". `proper-lockfile` is what
npm itself locks with, and stale-takeover is precisely the problem it has
already solved: it re-stats the lock directory after claiming it and gives
the lock up when the mtime is not the one it wrote, so the loser of a
takeover race releases instead of proceeding.

- core/auth/node/file-lock.ts: `withSecretFileLock`. `realpath: false` so a
  file can be locked into existence (the very first `set` has no
  `secrets.json`, and the library's default resolves through `fs.realpath`);
  a warning in place of the library's `onCompromised`, which throws from a
  timer and would take the session down; and a degrade-with-one-warning path
  rather than a throw when no lock can be taken — this store exists for boxes
  missing the usual mechanism (#1848, #1905) and must not gain a new way to
  be unavailable.
- FileSecretStore.mutate holds it across the whole read-modify-write. The
  optimistic verify stays underneath and is not redundant: a lock is advisory
  between the processes that take it, so the verify covers a writer outside
  this codebase and covers the degrade path. The in-process queue stays too,
  and gains a second job — proper-lockfile is not reentrant, so serializing
  per path keeps ELOCKED meaning "another process".
- absorbFileSecretsIntoKeyring takes the same lock around orphan adoption and
  the atomic claim, behind a lock-free `readdir` fast path so the common
  startup (keychain available, no file ever written) neither creates a lock
  directory nor warns about one it could not create.

proper-lockfile is a root `dependency` per the placement rule, and is named
in all three bundler `external` lists: tsup externalizes what the *client's*
manifest declares, so a root-only CJS package was being inlined into the ESM
bundles, leaving esbuild's `Dynamic require of "path" is not supported` shim
that killed `--cli` at import time. That rule was undocumented; it is now in
AGENTS.md beside the placement rule that creates it, and mirrored into
.github/copilot-instructions.md.

Tests: 7 new in file-lock.test.ts driving a real second process (the existing
suite structurally cannot — `serialize` orders in-process callers before the
lock sees them), plus two for the migration fast path.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01JTHVxSu8AUgHRLvo1ntZ8H
Signed-off-by: cliffhall <cliff@futurescale.com>
This commit is contained in:
cliffhall 2026-08-23 09:32:41 -04:00
commit 04dbc36544

View file

@ -502,9 +502,11 @@ Setting the passphrase later is safe — the next write upgrades an existing pla
The Inspector writes the file `0600` and re-tightens it at startup if something loosened it. If it _cannot_ — the file belongs to another user, or the mount is read-only — it says so in the log rather than continuing to describe the file as protected, since on that box the mode claim above is not true.
**Two Inspectors, one file.** Within a process, mutations are serialized per file path, so a web session's own concurrent saves cannot lose each other. Across processes — a CLI run beside a web session — there is deliberately **no lock**: writers are allowed to collide and the loser is made to notice. Each mutation reads the file, applies its change, writes, then reads back and compares the whole map; if another process wrote in between, it re-applies onto what they left and retries, and after five lost rounds it fails loudly rather than returning as though the value were saved.
**Two Inspectors, one file.** Within a process, mutations are serialized per file path, so a web session's own concurrent saves cannot lose each other. Across processes — a CLI run beside a web session — each mutation takes an exclusive lock on `secrets.json.lock` for the whole read-modify-write, using [`proper-lockfile`](https://github.com/moxystudio/node-proper-lockfile) (the same library npm itself locks with). The lock expires 10 seconds after its holder stops refreshing it, so an Inspector that is killed mid-save does not leave the file unwritable.
This is **not mutual exclusion**, and the residual case is worth stating: the verify only catches a clobber that has already landed, so if one Inspector reads back *before* the other's write arrives, both report success and one value is gone. That needs two Inspectors writing the same file within the gap between one's write and its read-back — narrow, but not only a crash. An earlier build did take a lock (`secrets.json.lock`); it was removed because making a `mkdir` lock single-winner on a stale takeover needs a compare-and-swap on a directory entry that Node does not expose, so it had the same class of failure with several hundred more lines and no way to close it.
Underneath the lock, each mutation still reads the file, applies its change, writes, then reads back and compares the whole map; if something wrote in between it re-applies onto what was left and retries, failing loudly after five lost rounds rather than returning as though the value were saved. That check is not redundant with the lock — a lock only orders the writers that *take* it, so it covers an editor, a restored backup, or an Inspector older than this release.
It is also what covers the lock being unavailable. This store exists for boxes where the usual mechanism isn't there, so a directory that can't hold a lock file — a read-only `$HOME`, a mount owned by another uid — makes the save proceed unlocked with a warning, rather than turning every `set` into a failure on exactly the deployments the store was written for.
Three env vars affect where the file lands. `MCP_INSPECTOR_SECRET_STORE=keyring|file|memory` picks the store outright, bypassing the probe. `MCP_INSPECTOR_SECRET_FILE` names the file. Failing both, the file follows `MCP_STORAGE_DIR` — the same variable that relocates OAuth tokens and `client.json` — so mounting a volume at your configured storage directory is enough to make secrets durable there.